Day 93 2 Samuel 1-3

            Sorry for the frequent delays.  Once I get caught up again I’m going to try to get a week or two ahead so I have some buffer space again.

            Samuel was so awesome that he got two books, even though he’s dead for the second one.

            In second Samuel, David learns about the death of Saul from a guy who says he helped Saul kill himself.  He’s an Amalekite, which is a strike against him already, then David and his men mourn deeply for Saul and execute the Amalekite messenger for having killed God’s anointed.  I think that’s kind of a technicality, but it wouldn’t be the most obtuse interpretation of God’s will we’ve seen so far.

            When the Lord tells David that it’s a good time to return to Israel, he goes into Hebron and explains that he is now the king of Israel.  The tribe of Judah is on board, but no one else is buying it.  The rest of Israel is following Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth propped up by Saul’s general Abner.  Just as one would expect, things go pretty well for David and the tribe of Judah, but not so hot for Israel.  David starts having lots of sons and stuff, but Ish-Bosheth winds up losing the support of Abner over some accusations regarding one of Saul’s concubines.  Abner actually went to join David over the quarrel, but David sent him away.  Once David’s general heard about what happened though, he had Abner brought back again and killed him, believing the whole thing to be a ploy and that Abner was a spy.

Day 92 I Samuel 28-31

            Now that Samuel’s dead, the Philistines are going to come square off against Saul and his army.  Achish, the king where David’s staying, makes David his personal bodyguard for life.

            Without Samuel to talk to God for him, Saul is really nervous about this fight.  Even though he had expelled all the media from the land, he sets his men to work finding one for him.  That’s medium like someone who talks to the dead that he’s looking for, not like music and movies.

            They find a medium on the forest moon of Endor, I mean in the town of Endor, and she summons Samuel for Saul to question.  Samuel says that Saul is an idiot for even asking, and his nation will be taken from him and given to David.

            Once Achish meets up with the other Philistine leaders, they all kind of flip out about David and his men being there.  They insist that Achish send them back home because they might turn on them in the battle.  It’s a good thing they did too because David returned home just in time to find the whole place plundered and burned to the ground.  Some Amalikite raiders had come through and taken all the goods and the women.  Fortunately they left an ephod, which David was able to use to consult with the Lord.  God told him to pursue the raiders and they got all of their gold and livestock and wives and other valuables back.  They also killed all but a couple hundred of the Amalekites.

            Meanwhile, back at the war, Israel was losing badly.  Saul’s three sons were all killed and on that same day Saul jumped on his own sword when his armor-bearer refused to kill him.  He was hoping to escape the abuse of the Philistines when they caught him.  Once they found his body they took it back to Beth Shan and hung it on a wall.  Some soldiers mounted an expedition to go retrieve it later on, but, more importantly, the Philistines occupied a big chunk of Israel now.

Day 91 I Samuel 25-27

            David petitioned a wealthy Calebite to give his men some supplies, citing the good treatment this guy had received from David’s men at some earlier time.  The Calebite tells David’s men to get lost.  Several things all happen after that in rapid succession.

            First, The Calebite’s wife, Abigail, heard about what had happened, correctly surmised that David was going to swoop in and wipe them all out, and started frantically scrambling to collect bread and oil to run out and give to his army.  Next, David’s messenger’s return with the news from the wealthy Calebite and David immediately rounds up four hundred men to go stomp on this guy.  Abigail and David end up meeting partway, but not until after David had just sworn something along the lines of “May God deal with me however harshly He sees fit if even one male is left of his by morning.”  Of course then Abigail shows up and smooths everything over and it would be pretty ridiculous for David to go wipe out Abigail’s family after that.  It seems for a moment like David has really put his foot in his mout.  He’s sworn this oath to God, but he did it in ignorance, and now there’s no way for him to do what’s right and still uphold his word to God.  Remember what happened to Saul’s army after Saul’s son Jonathan broke that stupid vow that he didn’t even know about.  He just ate some honey off the ground after Saul had sworn that no one would eat anything, and God allowed the Philistine army to escape annihilation at the hands of Israel because of it.

            David doesn’t even seem to register this problem though, and merrily goes back to his camp with Abigail’s supplies.

            As always, God has David’s back on this one though.  When Abigail returns to her husband, he is very drunk and the news of what had happened that day stopped his heart.  Vow fulfilled, David sends word that he would like to take Abigail as his wife.  She accepts.

            David has another encounter with Saul, much like the last one.  Saul catches wind of David’s camp and takes an army to go catch him.  David sneaks in with a couple other guys during the night and steals Saul’s water jug and his spear from right next to his head as he’s asleep.  His men try to get David to kill Saul, but he’s still not okay with killing ‘God’s anointed’ so he just leaves and then comes back in the morning to tell Saul about how he could have killed him again, but didn’t.  Saul again admits David’s superiority in all things and then leaves.

            At this point, it’s pretty clear that Saul’s not going to stop being a problem any time soon to David goes to live among the Philistines.  King Achish gave him and his men a small town to call their own an they spent the next year and four months raiding the country side from there.  They would go into a town and be sure to kill everyone in it before looting all their goods and animals.  That way, when the king asked where they had gone raiding, David could lie to him and say they went out into the Negev somewhere.  David told Achish that he was going into Israel a lot to raid the towns there, which he was pretty happy with.  He figured that with David stirring up all this trouble among the Israelites, they would all hate him forever and he would have to stay and be a loyal subject forever.

  Oh, also, Samuel died.

Day 90 I Samuel 21-24

            David and his men run from Saul through Israel and a lot of different foreign places, and Saul pursued them.  Finally in some mountains, Saul went to relieve himself in a cave and he just happened to enter one that David and his men were hiding in.  David was able to get so close to Saul that he clipped off a bit of Saul’s robe.  His men urged him to kill Saul as this was the fulfillment of God’s promise to deliver him to David, but he refused and actually felt kind of guilty for taking that bit of his robe.

            Once Saul turned to leave the cave, David revealed himself and explained that he was not Saul’s enemy and basically that he could have easily killed Saul but chose not to.  Saul was moved by David’s speech and realized that God was with David and that he would be king.  He asked David to swear not to wipe out his whole family and then he leaves.  David and his men still went up to the stronghold in the mountains though.

Day 89 I Samuel 18-20

            Saul is starting to get concerned about David’s growing popularity.  Everyone knows that David is getting these great military victories all the time and everyone except Saul seems to realize that it’s because God is with him.  Saul reacts mostly by yelling at people and throwing his spear at David a couple times.

            David went to seek refuge with Samuel for a while and when Saul sent men after him, they ended up prophesying with Samuel there in stead.  Twice more Saul sent men, but each time they kept getting caught up in the spirit of the lord and prophesying.  Finally Saul came himself.  He saw what was going on and started prophesying.

            I feel like they mean something different when they say prophesy than I mean when I say prophesy.

            All this time David has cultivated an extremely close relationship with Saul’s son Jonathan.  Like, it kind of sounds like they’re sleeping together, close.  They set up a very Hardy Boys scheme to prove that Saul is out to kill David because Jonathan is having trouble believing it.  Their plan works and Jonathan is convinced, but not before Saul throws a spear at him and calls him a “son of a perverse and rebellious woman.”

            In the end, David and Jonathan part ways with an oath that there be friendship between their families forever.

Day 88 I Samuel 15-17

            God decides it’s time to make good on that curse He laid down back in I think Exodus about how He would wipe out the Amalekites for interfering with the Israelite’s flight from Egypt.  He tells Saul to wipe out every man, woman, child, goat and cow among the Amalekites.

            Saul goes down south to Amalek and sets an ambush.  He tells the Kenites to go take a walk because they’ve been good to the Israelites and he doesn’t want them to accidently get vanquished as well.  After they leave, Saul slaughters all the Amalekites.  Well, almost all of them.  He takes the Amalekite king prisoner and sets aside a few of the choicest of their livestock to sacrifice to the Lord, but that hardly counts.

            Well, actually, it turns out that it counts a whole lot.  God is so incensed at Saul’s impertinance, and his fundamental misunderstanding of how to make the Lord happy, that He tells Samuel that He’s done with Saul.  He is withdrawing Saul’s divine mandate.

            God tells Samuel to go up to Bethlehem to anoint a new king form the sons of Jesse.  Saul is beset by demons though and no longer connected to God at all so Samuel has to hide his intentions to keep Saul from killing him.  He goes up to Bethlehem and anoints David as Israel’s new king.

            Unfortunately, being anointed king doesn’t automatically give David any super-powers or an army, so Saul’s still running the country for now.  Saul’s attendants suggest that maybe he’ll get some relief from this whole evil spirit thing if he listens to some nice music, and you’ll never guess who just so happens to be a great musician.  Yes, David is brought in to sooth Saul’s episodes.  Saul feels much better and keeps David around as his armor bearer.

            Shortly after this, Saul completely loses all memory of David, because when a giant Philistine starts causing trouble in the battle field and David shows up and kills him, Saul shows no sign of recognition.

            Obviously, the philistine’s name was Goliath, by the way, and David showed up that day simply to deliver some grain to his older brothers who were following Saul.  When Goliath issued a challenge to all of Israel to come and fight him one on one, no one would respond except David, who was confident that the Lord would see him through it.

Day 87 I Samuel 13-14

            Saul was king for 42 years.  During that time the Philistines were a big problem.  Fearing an Israelite rebellion, they barred any Israelite from becoming a blacksmith so they had no weapons.  Anyone who wanted to get their metal tools sharpened had to have it done by philistines out of town.  With God on their side though, it doesn’t matter much what they have for weapons so Saul went to war anyway.

            They had things set up so Samuel would come in and petition God for victory before the battle, but he was late so Saul gave an offering in his place.  When Samuel arrived, he was angry at Saul for doing that and told him that his line could have ruled forever, but now it was going to end with him.  As far as punishments go for offering improper sacrifices though, saul seems like he got of kind of easy.  The last people to screw up the burnt offering were killed with fire from God on the spot.

            The battle looks bleak.  Saul’s army is outnumbered, but his son Jonathan crept around to a Philistine outpost and killed about 20 men, throwing the Philistines into a panic.  They ran away, and Saul was going to pursue them, but some divinations revealed that Jonathan was a little bit cursed, so they shouldn’t go.  His faith was exemplary and he hadn’t broken any commands, but Saul had made some vow on behalf of the rest of the army saying that cursed is anyone who eats before they win the fight.  Jonathan hadn’t heard that vow so he ate some honey off the ground on the walk back.  So, the Philistines live to fight another day.